not necessarily, but pretty much so, high end enemies can single hot to kill. with powerful attacks,

In Fallout 3 I learned to keep my health low, used this later in Oblivion and Skyrim and it works well.

Max health in skyrim is around 160 or something in base game, needed to increase it a bit for dragonborn.

Oblivion was worst here, at higher level enemies could get insane health, 1500 for strong enemies was not uncommon, same as high level enemies in FO4.

However damage was far more limited to around 50 for both you and enemies. Yes the advanced spellmaking and enchantment had solutions.

In Skyrim I could not get into melee with stronger dragons, they would kill me, same with many of the stronger enemies like dragon priests.

On common tactic with dragons was to kite them so they attacked some animals and then kill them.

Yes, some of the scenes are set up so that you can be cut down in crossfire.

There is a little group of houses near the edge of the glowing sea populated by mutants, in my case it's warlords.

It's near the broken elevated highways.

There are other areas in the game where they do the same but this one is very contained.

They made it so that the mutants have cover from where they fire at you with energy weapons and minigun.

It's also a spot where the game sends in BOS to attack them when you are in the area.

It's easy enough when you are in power armour but when in ballistic clothes you have to be really careful of friendly fire and the foes.

I have to take cover and run inside their houses so i can fight them one on one away from the other fire.

The poor BOS always get wiped out if you don't help them because the Warlords are carrying high powered weapons and are "bullet sponges"

Yes back to my Oblivion example the fights was not real dangerous, at high level you had lots of health and armor too so both parts would use an long time killing each other and you could always heal up.

If you're on PC it's simple...


Realistic Bullet Mod...Mod npcs/monsters die in one shot on survival. I think legendaries are slightly harder but not much.

It's called playing on easy

...and I completely agree with this! Especially the part about new tactics and abilities, or perhaps improved weapons. Imagine tackling three supermutants who used cover, flanking tactics, and suppression fire. Then say one is armed with a fat man, and two are armed with explosive mini-guns...

Everyone brings down those stupid BoS vertibirds. I watched a Courser bring one down all by himself, I was being cagey, and he was muttering something about 'making it last'. There are instances when single Super Mutants bring em' down, and investigation revealed a pipe rifle.

You can't die on easy. Arbitration you can easily die.

It's not the Vertibird...its the Paladins in T-60 who use laser rifles that are unable to kill warlords because they have so much health and resistances.

Sure the south western muties are tough and the BoS is not. That makes little difference. The Vertibirds go down constantly all over the silly map. If I see one I look for an escape route. I had to run from one crashing yesterday. Anyone can bring those down. As I said single muties with a pipegun have done it.

Honestly, the vertibird's are made of paper because it gets boring watching a vertibird fly around doing nothing... the devs wanted to create excitement, so they scripted the crashes (and did a fine job too) and made certain there would be plenty of them to watch. The first vertibird crash I ever saw, I was like "Holycrap!" as I scrambled for my life... It was great!

Raiders with that stuff is lethal, luckily nobody has used an explosive minigun against me.

Fully perked it works well against bullet sponges like warlords.

I don't know what you expect, even if there were "advanced tactics" low health enemies would still die too fast to matter, what would the point be of creating advanced tactics if the enemies die too fast to actually use them.

The "bullet sponges" last long enough to actually achieve things against you when you are powerful, exactly as their weaker brethren should when you are weak.

"Oh no those low level super mutants are flanking me while the ones in front provided covering fire, a suicider is rushing me, and that one is going for that dropped rocket launcher, BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT(fired while spinning 360), few they are all dead because I'm ungodly powerful and they have next to no health"

Tactics require time, melee enemies rushing you while ranged ones provide support does not work when you can kill the ranged ones first, then kill the melee ones as well before they get to you. The only way to buy time against the pc is to either preform some ridiculous crowd control to take away their ability to react (aka, stunlock bs that everyone hates), force them to use slow tactics that prevent them from reacting (aka, enemies shoot you dead instantly), or make the enemies tough so the reaction happens at a slower rate (durable enemies).

You either make the enemies so lethal you can't survive, or make the enemies so tough that they can. That warlord you are pumping bullets into is buying time for other mutants to run around behind you, get to cover, and close to melee range, he is suppressing fire and keeping you distracted, if he died instantly that would never have a chance to happen.

I have been smacked in the back because I was to preoccupied with one tough enemy, but if he died instantly I wouldn't have been.

---

edit.

Suppressing fire is in the game, I don't know how to say this but all fire is suppressing fire, whether or not you are suppressed is a matter of whether you think it will kill you, a mutant firing a minigun at you and forcing you to duck behind a wall is suppressing fire.

Cover and flanking do also exist in game, but they are a matter of terrain coding, the ai is blind, they can not "see" cover, they can only react to what cover boxes have been programed as a part of the terrain, and they are completely at the mercy of the player's vision and the map developers code.

people are always complaining about bullet sponge enemies...im playing on surv, - i dont think its bad in any way the way it is and i kill most things in 1-2 shots anyway at lvl 50...so i dont know what the problem is.... maybe you could try to flaten the power curve a bit if that helps

Its an difference between enemies able to take some damage and enemies who takes minutes to kill as they did in Oblivion without special spells or enchants.

I don't think bullet sponges are an serious issue in FO4 because of the tools we have, heavy weapons or automatic with explosive works well on medium ranges, at long range its the gaus.

See the huge amount of low level enemies as more of an issue.

To be fair, on Normal difficulty, the the opposite problem is true. I think I killed the Legendary Deathclaw in about 5 bursts and one VATS headshot from my modded assault rifle the first time I found it. I would have expected that to have been much more frightening.

I'm going to reference 2 more games and the details of the mechanics they use to create awesome challenges:

1.) Dragon's Dogma -- the way boss / mini-boss characters have a decided weakness that you need to discover and then exploit. Like the way you need to flank enemies using a shield, or chop the tails off of those lizard things to be able to cause any damage. You can whomp them face-to-face all day long, and you'll cause almost no damage. Find their weakness, and you'll cause massive damage. Even then, exploiting their weakness takes skill and timing. Battles are usually tense.

2.) The original Halo -- the Hunters. Massive heavily armored enemies impervious to almost all forms of damage and using the very scary fuel-rod weapon. You could waste rockets, sniper rifle rounds, or 5 clips of assault rifle ammo to bring them down from a distance, but I found the easiest way to defeat them was at close range. Sidestep their charge and then shoot them 2-3 times with a pistol between their armor plates. Not only was this an intelligent challenge for gamers paying attention to details, it made sense and left you feeling like a badass when you figured it out.

In reply to the OP, a good fix, in my opinion, is http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2393 - a mod on the Nexus. I use it because a humanoid enemy (with brain in the head) which is still standing after a bullet to the head is just plain silly

on any level of difficulty.

Well the Supermutants don't play by the rules.

I challenged a Warlord to a round of boxing and he pulls out a gun.

That's not fair so I pulled out a knife.

I filmed it here

https://youtu.be/I9HWOJHOlmA

If that was a regular supermutant he would have gone down after a couple of blows.

This one was a bullet sponge.

YOU were a bullet sponge. He shot you, like, 15 times in the nuts, but you were all like, "Whateverrrrrr..."

Yeah that's not realistic, not like the ability to shoot 9 people in the face without missing in 3 seconds. The enemies can't dent my hp with a mininuke ffs.

well i just found a new most hated enemey, legendary deathskull scorpions...honestly, the only things i dont kill in 1-2 head shots are the highest tier enemies and legendaries now, i think thats ok

I was the same for the first ~500 hours of play. But the game just gets way too easy on Normal past about level 40, or 60 at minimum.

My initial observations on "Hard": go into VATS and empty a whole magazine of 10mm into a bloatfly at ~25 meters and it is still coming for me with like 1/3 health --> my reaction "No way! That is so unrealistic" and yes, it is . . . unless what you assume is that by LEVELING you get more accurate.

Another way to think of the "lower player damage" and "higher NPC damage" on Hard and harder is that: the sole survivor just woke up after 200 years of being frozen. He/she is rusty/out-of-shape, assuming they were ever any better at combat (the male one would assume, the female not necessarily owing to their pre-game occupations).

As you level, you are also "getting better" at how hard you hit, how well you aim, how quick you react, etc.

While I agree "bullet sponge" is not the most ideal solution for "difficulty," for lack of any other alternatives, I've been exploring earnest play on Hard and I'm actually coming to like it. The Legendaries are a bit absurd on hard, but even then, no more absurd than some of the core elements of the game.

I take interest in all of this because, long-term I would like to make (or be involved in a team who make) an overhaul mod that offers better (or at least different) alternatives for "difficulty." I think doing it right will entail tweaking and changing values throughout much of the game, and in some cases changing fundamental game dynamics (e.g., adding hunger, thirst, fatigue, disease, mental stress [maybe], changing how healing works, etc.).

Meh...I use a mod to adjust enemy health which is set to I believe 50% higher then survival and my damage 30% less then survival in conjunction so it's fine lol

OMG! THAT WAS EPIC MY BROTHER! (sister?)!!

Well played! *applauds*

BTW, was that some Achievement you unlocked from doing that?